LightSquared’s LTE Woes May be Coming to an End, but Not in a Good Way

The National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee may have just tapped the final nail in LightSquared’s LTE coffin. A memo released yesterday by the nine federal agencies that make up the committee deemed that LightSquared’s proposed LTE plans would interfere with existing GPS satellites in a way that cannot be fixed.

The troubled wireless internet service provider is still awaiting FCC approval in their quest to build a Long-Term-Evolution network, which was the foundation of a now delayed partnership with Sprint. If LightSquared is officially shot down, the Now Network will have to explore other avenues in order to further advance their already running Network Vision campaign.

Sprint recently unveiled three new LTE devices at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, that are currently slated to be released in the first half of 2012. With such aggressive moves being made, it’s doubtful that LightSquared’s current situation will completely derail Sprint’s planned deployment of a nationwide LTE network. But this setback could very well slow things down. Here’s to hoping that Sprint has a backup plan.

About Mark Hearn - Mark is the founding father of SprintFeed. He is a nerd's nerd if ever such a thing existed. His love affair with the Now Network started with the release of the Treo 600 back in 2004 and has been going strong ever since. Highly opinionated and somewhat eccentric he shares his ramblings about his network of choice here at SprintFeed.

Well that was a fine use of 9 billion dollars. Hopefully the didn’t pony up too much of that just yet.

Anonymous

If they are going to deny LightSquared use of the spectrum that they acquired, the FCC needs to seamlessly arrange a swap for a comparable amount of spectrum.

Tommy Thompson

Lightsquared being shot down doesn’t affect Sprints deployment. Sprint is deploying their Network Vision/LTE SEPARATE of Clear and Lightsquared. This just means the possibility of Lightsquared not using Sprints towers to trasmit their LTE. Nothing to do with Sprints deployment of LTE

Anonymous

Not sure why people always seem to gloss over this fact. Sprint is building it’s own network. Clear and LS, if they happen are extras.

Merlin

LightSquared was abusing their spectrum. They were not licensed to use it for earth-based transmitters. The FCC doesn’t ‘owe’ them Anything. LightSquared knew that they were doing something wrong. They just thought that they could bully their way through.
If LightSquared had been allowed to complete their network, most(all?) of the GPS systems in use today would have been shut down. The Military ones Might have been able to be re-designed to handle the interferrence from the LightSquared terrestrial transmitters, however, all of the civilian GPS users would have been permamantly shut down.
Therefore it was All of the current GPS equipment vs LightSquared illegal use of their radio spectrum.
LightSquared gambled and lost!!